Transport Services: A Modern API for an Adaptive Internet Transport Layer

TL;DR

This paper introduces TAPS, a new protocol-independent API for the Internet's transport layer, enabling adaptive and flexible transport services for applications.

Contribution

It presents the design and implementation of the TAPS API, allowing applications to dynamically select and utilize various transport protocols.

Findings

TAPS API demonstrates flexibility across multiple protocols.

The API simplifies application development for diverse network conditions.

An open-source Python implementation showcases practical usability.

Abstract

Transport services (TAPS) is a working group of the Internet's standardization body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). TAPS defines a new recommended API for the Internet's transport layer. This API gives access to a wide variety of services from various protocols, and it is protocol-independent: the transport layer becomes adaptive, and applications are no longer statically bound to a particular protocol and/or network interface. We give an overview of the TAPS API, and we demonstrate its flexibility and ease of use with an example using a Python-based open-source implementation.